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English-language Hialeah Times. By the mid-1980s Albert had formed a close friendship with local news anchor Rick Sanchez (the future disgraced CNN host who would get himself fired in 2010 for making anti-Semitic comments). Sanchez never did any reporting on Albert, but he was a frequent guest in his home and companion during nights out on the town. Albert used the media he controlled to steer political coverage, which made him useful—or dangerous—to local politicians. One of the first politicians he supported was Congressman Claude Pepper, who had represented Hialeah since 1963 and soon became a guest at Albert’s parties.
    In the early 1980s, Albert hired two lobbyists—political bottom-feeders, but well-connected ones—to manage his political contributions. One was Donald Dugan, a short, 350-pound bald man whose other distinguishing features, according to a police report, were “severe rashes on both elbows.” Dugan had worked for Congressman Pepper, and had ties to the drug-smuggling Tabraue family. The other lobbyist was a former top aide to Governor Bob Graham named Ron Book, who would later plead guilty to taking illegal campaign contributions in an unrelated matter.
    Inspired by Danny Mones’s lavish dinners for judges at the University of Miami, Albert moved his San Lazaro feasts from the streets of Hialeah to the Doral Hotel. They became major events, drawing local mayors, police officials, and countless judges, county supervisors, and political hopefuls eager for Albert’s support. At the feasts’ peak, more than a thousand guests attended. Albert, who normally eschewed the spotlight, would make a grand entrance with a retinue of bodyguards who carried his nine-foot-tall San Lazaro statue to a place of honor while Catholic clergy offered blessings.
    During this time, Albert became closer to Bobby Erra and his girlfriend, Marsha Ludwig. Ludwig, who referred to herself as Erra’s “wife” although they never married, lent her own cachet to Albert’s political standing. She had grown up with a close relationship to Dade County’s most illustrious family, the Grahams, cattle ranchers whose sons Philip and Cap became, respectively, publisher of the Washington Post and a Florida state senator . Ludwig had gone to high school with Cap’s son, Bob, and had introduced him to the woman he would marry, Adele. Ludwig had remained friends with the couple into adulthood. When Bob Graham became governor of Florida, Ludwig gave Albert a connection to the governor’s mansion, which he would avail himself of when the time was right.
    By age thirty, Albert was on his way to becoming a leading citizen of South Florida. But his rising stature in no way crimped his cocaine trafficking. As he entertained police and local political elites, he stored cocaine under a doghouse in the yard. In the 1980s, he relocated his base of operations to a nearby barber shop, and was moving between 100 and 480 kilos of coke every month.
    Albert’s growing closeness with Erra and Ludwig didn’t just benefit his social standing. It signaled a seismic shift in the underworld. After Albert’s original partner, Gary Teriaca, disappeared in 1981, Erra (despite his antidrug views) took over Teriaca’s partnership with Albert. He and Albert didn’t just distribute coke together; they also joined in extortion and offshore money-laundering operations. When their partnership was exposed, federal investigators believed it represented a historic first: a criminal alliance in which a Cuban American attained equal footing with a senior member of the Italian Mafia. The success Albert enjoyed in the criminal world while he simultaneously suborned much of Dade County’s political leadership would eventually earn him his most enduring nickname, bestowed by the local media: “The Great Corrupter.”

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    Ricky Prado remained an unremarked-upon presence in the community. His separate personas—fireman, Transworld detective, Air Force